Sirius Black and the Night of the Prank
by Richard Katz
Summary: If James hadn't known he was just trying to be funny, he should have realized that there was no hope that Remus would.


The shutters of his eyelids opened and for a brief, delirious moment, there was only the sight of sun slanting through the dust motes in the air. Then his neck twitched and suddenly he felt the weight of his screaming muscles on the floorboards, nearly choking on the blood in his mouth as he groaned. Remus Lupin rolled his eyes back in an attempt to look around the room as the sinews of his neck twinged again. His hair was stuck to the floor with drying blood, but there was nobody in the room that he could see. Where were his friends? Remus's lips cracked open, but no sound came out. He tried again. "Sirius?" His voice was too faint. "James? Peter?" The silence of the sunlight pressed down. Maybe he'd woken up later than usual. Maybe they'd already had to head back to the dormitory. He was always worrying them about running across Madam Pomfrey; he must not have remembered them leaving. He wouldn't have been surprised to not remember them leaving; pain wasn't very easy to focus with, and every signal his body was sending him was agony. Agony happened sometimes, a lot of the time, though less so lately. Failing to determine whether he was wearing any of his clothes, Remus felt time fade in and out of the sunlit room. Vaguely, he registered that he'd had a bad moon.  
Hands and muttered spells clouded the back of his mind. Images flashed through his vision faster than he could follow them. "There now Remus, there now," Madam Pomfrey was saying, maybe seconds later, maybe hours. Forcing his eyes to focus, Remus registered Dumbledore's face. Dumbledore?  
"Professor?" Remus croaked. What was Professor Dumbledore doing here? Where were his friends?  
"Hullo, Remus," Professor Dumbledore said quietly. "How are you feeling this morning?" Promfrey was hovering by the doorway. He couldn't help the half-glance he sent in her direction; he felt awful, terrible, but what was Dumbledore doing here, was something wrong? He forced himself to meet Dumbledore's eyes. Did the man look anxious? Stressed?  
"Alright," Remus croaked hoarsely. When was the last time his voice was this hoarse?  
"Albus..." Promfrey said warningly from the doorway.  
"Yes Poppy, I think you're right," the headmaster said amiably. "Remus, I wish you a speedy recovery," he said briskly. With a swish of robes and a smile, he was gone.

Sirius's ears were ringing, he would vouch for it in a court of law. James sat sulking in the chair to his left. Despite the fact that it was still only bloody six o'clock in the morning, McGonagall sat grading papers at her desk, having now been both fully dressed and livid for more than three hours. There was a certain rigidity to the room; it was as though they were all perched precariously on a line of wire above a prized glass sculpture garden, or really it was as though Sirius had just realized that the world he took for granted was actually a construction of glass and tissue paper through which he'd been moving like a rock giant for the past five years. Dumbledore's head popped into the fire behind McGonagall's desk, nearly causing James and Sirius to overturn their chairs.  
"Were you able to speak to Remus?" McGonagall asked without looking up from the scroll she was marking.  
"At present I believe that he would benefit more from some rest than from a conversation with me," Dumbledore calmly and quietly in a way that quite disguised the fact that the innocent-looking professor was really capable of blasting Sirius's ears off without even resorting to the octaves that his mother prefered. Sirius kept his eyes trained on the carpet. Less than five hours ago, Dumbledore had told him (_told _him) that he was lucky to be avoiding expulsion. Less than five hours ago, Dumbledore had told him, that he, personally, had almost gotten Snape and, by association, Remus, killed.  
Beside Sirius, James shifted his stiff frame slightly. "Is Remus alright, Professor?" James asked. Just over eight hours ago, James had broken his screaming tirade to punch Sirius in the face. James Potter was the only person in the world to whom Sirius Black had ever turned the other cheek. In ten years or so, or however long it took before they were going to be able to laugh at this (it was, after all, a bloody fucking joke), Sirius was going to repay that punch.

Sirius felt his stomach clenching again as Dumbledore informed James and McGonagall that Remus wasn't injured in any way that Madam Promfrey couldn't handle. If there was one clear emotion that Sirius felt about this night, it was regret about that. He hadn't meant to make Remus go through the full moon alone. "I will check back in around eight. James, if you wish to go to bed..."

Silence resumed again as, with a small pop, Dumbledore's head vanished. James, having not committed near-prank-murder that night, had been free to go to bed since Dumbledore had dropped them off in McGonagall's office around three in the morning. He hadn't budged from his seat the rest of the night, though Sirius was loath to think of why.

Silence resumed again as the occupants of the room committed themselves to waiting until eight. And at eight? Sirius wasn't really sure. In the wee hours of the morning, deeply involved in committing the floor of McGonagall's office to memory, he'd had plenty of time to go over the scenarios. Sirius knew it wasn't going to be pretty, and it wasn't the way that Dumbledore had talked to him so much as it was because of James. He'd never fought with James. James understood him, James should have known it was just a prank, he should have understood that Sirius wasn't thinking, hadn't meant to harm... And yet James had stood in the dark, still in the shadow of the tree, still with Snape, with Snape shaking on the ground less than a hundred yards away and screamed and screamed and screamed at him. A rather larger than tiny part of Sirius hoped that Snape had been too rattled to be paying attention to what James was saying at that point.  
He didn't want Remus to be angry with him. He wanted all of this to_ go away._ He wanted it to be yesterday again, he wanted to skip to next year; he wanted to just go see Remus right now, to be done with this waiting. But he found himself barely able to pick his eyes off the floor. _James _was mad at him, Dumbledore was mad at him, McGonagall was mad at him.. Remus... Remus was going to be furious.  
Time slowed as the sun crept further up through the window. It shone brightly, slowly, _slowly_ crawling across the floor until it finally began to work up his shoes. This night had redefined slowness. Anything that Sirius had ever thought was slow before felt fast now. Anything. He was going to take his next Bins lecture with flying colors. Lost in thought, half blinded by the morning sun, Sirius nearly jumped off his chair again as Dumbledore clambered out of the fireplace.  
Sirius followed behind James and Dumbledore with his head down. He imagined the horrible things that Remus was going to say to him. Was Remus going to try to hit him too? Sirius nearly walked into the door frame before he managed to follow James into the hospital wing. Remus was propped up in his usual bed, his body bearing evidence of the rough night. Promfrey seemed to have cut his hair again; she usually had to do that when Moony scratched at his ears.  
"Hello Remus," James said stiffly, dropping down into a chair as Dumbledore sat down gracefully next to him. Sirius teetered near the end of the bed. He glanced at Remus, only to see him panicked looking, probably because they were all acting like nutters, interrupting him so soon after the moon like this. Dumbledore was saying something about no cause for alarm. Sirius looked at the floor.  
He was the one who told Remus what happened. Dumbledore made him do it, left him there with James and went to go talk to Promfrey and he sounded so stupid, so idiotic there in the hospital wing, standing next to James with Remus's eyes on him. "... and I just wasn't thinking. I'm really sorry." Sirius said to the foot of the bed. He braced himself.

There was no answer. Covertly, Sirius glanced up at Remus because really, what was he waiting for, better to just get all the sodding hollering done now but Remus was only staring at him.

"Like I said, it was irresponsible of me and I'm sorry," Sirius said to Remus's knees. He winced, but the only sound in the room was the echoing quiet of Remus's silence.

"Are you saying that I almost killed Snape..." Remus said faintly.

"You didn't though," James interjected quickly. "He's fine, he's back in his dormitory."

"I almost killed Snape..."

"Remus I..." Sirius trailed off as Remus put his head in his hands, wrapping his fingers tightly in his newly-trimmed hair. "Snape's fine..."

"I can't believe it... I can't believe it..."

"Remus, I'm sorry," Sirius said desperately, but Remus didn't even seem to know he was there.

"Remus..." James said, but Remus didn't move.

The urge to flee rose up strongly in Sirius, swift like lightning and before he knew what he was doing he was skirting the end of the curtains and brushing by Promfrey and Dumbledore and he was in the corridor, running up stairs, up other stairs, until eventually he realized he was headed for the owlery.

James found him there, maybe a minute later, maybe an hour. He was blubbering, but James didn't say anything, just sort of shoved himself up onto the window ledge with him.  
"Bloody owls," James said, shaking a bit of owl dropping off his hand in disgust. He bumped his shoulder against Sirius gently, the fifteen year old boy equivalent of a warm hearted embrace.  
"Is Remus alright?" Sirius said. James shrugged.  
"Are you?"  
Sirius shrugged. Sunlight glinted off James' glasses. They both looked out over the grounds quietly.


End file.
